Wednesday, September 25, 2013

A Bit Of Breathing Space

It feels odd not to be rushing off to an appointment with a doctor today. Suddenly, life is much more calm and open ended, and I find that I have no idea what to do with myself at the moment.

Cancer has been an every single day thought for me for months and months on end: waiting for test results, going to the next round of tests, and then waiting for those results, surgery, recovery, chemo and then recovery from the chemo over and over again, and an endless string of daily radiation. Day in, day out, it has consumed my mind completely, living no space for much of anything else in its wake.

But now I have a bit of breathing space.

What comes next? How do I best use my gifts and my time? Am I doing enough, or should I be doing more...or less? What is best for me? For my family? How should I move forward?

None of this needs to be answered right this second, but the questions do need to be asked now that my brain can handle something beyond the contemplation of how to survive through the next round of ick. I'm not quite back to full speed -- trying to multi-task throws my exhausted self for a loop -- but I can at least begin to think a little more in the abstract, long-term, what if mode again, and not just in the immediate now and about how to get to the next appointment intact.

It's funny how survival mode shuts down pretty much everything else in its wake. And that is exactly how I have been living the last few months, in full on survival mode.

Not exactly the best frame of mind for contemplation.

Today will not be a day of decisions, though. There will be rest and some breathing space, probably for several days to come as I try to get my body to heal from all of the blasting of radiation.

But in the back of my whirring brain, the questions will be percolating. It is going to be interesting to see what answers begin to pop to the fore.